I got another huge sack of Shipton Mill unbleached yesterday! Although seemed to have tailed of with the bread making a bit recently. Should pull the starter out the fridge and give it some love really.

Become quite a fan of making the bread the afternoon/evening before and sticking it in the oven in the morning. Used to wait patiently for it to warm up, but seems to make no difference. Which is great as means its more feasible if I have to go out/not get up at stupid o'clock. Trying a loaf with some milk powder in it this morning. And possibly a naughty amount of of ghee and coconut oil.

Another thing I've noticed is how much difference autolyse makes. My understanding was just mixing flour and water and leaving it shouldnt make much of a difference other then how easy it all was to mix, but see a real difference in the quality of the final bread.

So bought a posh wireless thermometer for my BBQ and thought I'd finally try and get a handle of my daft oven. I knew it ran high, but the results are surprising in just how high. Phone is telling me after being left on max heat for a while it hits 300. Drop it down to 170 and its still reading 225. 150 is giving a more civilised 206. No wonder I've had so many issues with timing.

As I've got another 5 spare probes it did make me wonder can you bake by constant monitoring of internal temp. Although bread isn't an option in the app

Aldi have some good flours in at the mo T55, 00, dark rye and white spelt ~£1.60 /1.5kg

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I found their white spelt shockingly bad. There was just nothing interesting I could do with it, the texture was a mess, and the flavour had all gone because... it was white. A really odd / puzzling choice of flour to whiten, IMO.

I found their white spelt shockingly bad. There was just nothing interesting I could do with it, the texture was a mess, and the flavour had all gone because... it was white. A really odd / puzzling choice of flour to whiten, IMO.

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Yeah I made a few attempts at bread then decided it must have been intended for making cake or something.

So ... basic wholemeal - though I always include 50g of ground linseed and now am adding 50g of buckwheat flour to 200g of wholemeal ...

Looked at a few recipes online and it seems to be approx 0.7g of water per gramme of flour ?

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You’re talking “bakers percentages” there.

Yes. “70% hydration” (700mls water to 1kg flour) would be a reasonable benchmark / starting point.

A lot depends on the flours you’re using, though. Most ryes will happily suck up more and I’d happily go to 72-75% without many concerns with strong white; but even a small amount of spelt means a 70% loaf will struggle to hold itself entirely upright. (Hydrated spelt tends towards pancakes).

If there’s any gluten content / elasticity in your bread at all, folding and bulk proofing will also make a big difference (building structure, and so allowing your dough to hold more water).

Can’t say I’ve got my head around it completely! The top one was baked covered until fully cooked - and so, has a bit of an odd (steamed) texture. The lower one is more typical - and also reflects the difficulty im having in scoring loaves before they go in. (There’s also a jalapeño and cheese one that’s doing the rounds at work today. That came out quite well).

There are some priorities for improvement. I fucked up the initial “cloche proofing” process, as apparently I should have baked it with a coating of oil. As a result, it’s completely non non stick, and needs about a cm of semolina all the way round for an overnight proof.

The ad pictures also show a SMALL loaf in the middle of the BIG cloche bottom Whereas these are 1.5kg whoppers.